It's a sailboat. [/Mallrats]

*comes late to the game*

Re: the spinning girl:

a) she kinda creeps me out

b) they had to give her nipples??

c) I can see her switch by doing the opposite of what they suggested. Instead of "focusing" I actually unfocused my eyes (sort of the same strategy as Magic Eye) and saw it immediately. Try that.

I think you and I have broken brains, what with the spinning girl and now this. I've never seen one either. And I can't make sense out of the do-it-yourself version! I'm feeling very illusion-defective just now.

I don't understand what you're supposed to do with the Magic Eye thingy. This is okay, though, as I haven't seen a Magic Eye thingy since the early 90s, and I don't really miss them.

We seem to be experiencing that return to Victorian values that the Tories used to yearn for. Are people really so offended by a flash of an imaginary young woman's nipple? (I am rather grateful it is an imaginary young woman; if it were a man, imagine what else might be twirling.)

I didn't even want to admit this, but I totally couldn't, either! I just stared it it for a while and then drew a screen-encompassing gray squiggle and clicked "Done". Was I supposed to be looking for the gray squiggle?

Oh dear, I'm starting to feel really old, like I should be throwing my correspondence at the screen and squawking about how "the e-mail" doesn't work for me.

I know! I did the same thing, clicked "done" and...what the hell. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking at, and no amount of focusing, unfocusing, "deep-focusing," or crossing and uncrossing my eyes made anything appear. Am defective.

Okay, here's the basics:

1.) Stereograms are a way to see things in 3D without special glasses.

2.) The MagicEye thingy lets you make a special kind of stereogram. The MagicEye kind will allow you to specify the depth of areas of the image ("into the screen") but not their color, except for the overall color of the entire image.

3)The different shades of gray you draw with represent different depths.

4) Viewing stereograms is difficult the first time you try, and some people seem not to be able to do it. Yet, anyway. (Caveat: you need to be able to see well with both eyes, since you need binocular vision for stereograms to work at all.)

5) Learning to view stereograms is probably harder with the MagicEye kind than with the old fashioned type that use two separate images. If you're having trouble, try viewing these snowflakes. There are further instructions on that site. Once you can view the snowflakes, try doing the same thing with the MagicEye.

MagicEye makes my eyes feel stupid. Boo, MagicEye.

And those snowflakes went and gave me a headache.

Well I wasn't offended by it. I just didn't know why it was necessary and/or included. Like maybe they wanted to make sure you know it's a naked girl dancing, or something.

I can't see MagicEye things either. I've followed all the instructions, but still nothing.

I made a sailboat!

Woohoo, that's fun!

That would be why. Also, nipples are not a big deal.

As far as the actual illusion...

You can see it go either way. I finally figured out that the best way to do it is focus on the "plant" foot, because when you look only at the foot there is no other clue to orient you to right or left. If you look at the foot and imagine the girl to be spinning from viewer's right to viewer's left as she faces you, then the plant foot is the LEFT foot and the raised foot is the right foot. However, if you look at the plant foot and imagine the girl to be spinning in the opposite direction, from viewer's left to viewer's right as she faces you, then the plant foot becomes the RIGHT foot and the raised foot is the left foot. You can do this at will if you are focusing only on the foot. If you focus on the boobs or the hair or something that gives a left/right clue, then you are locked in to one perspective. Focus on the plant foot and at the moment where the toes disappear, you can imagine it to flip to the other direction and it will do so for you.

Secondly, and maybe this is the most "left-brained" response of all, it is impossible to say whether she is spinning clockwise or counterclockwise because to make that judgement, you have to view the spinning object from a perspective perpendicular to the plane of rotation. It's like the Earth. If you are floating above the North Pole and watching the earth spin, it appears to be spinning counterclockwise. If you are floating above the South Pole, the earth appears to be spinning clockwise. If you are floating side-on, above the equator, you cannot make a clockwise/counterclockwise determination.

Very nice!

I've made a few images so far, but my "drawing on a computer with a laptop-mouse" skills are crap so they aren't very good. I wish they had an archive of images from other people.

I was never able to see the Magic Eye stuff either--I'd see a 3D something for a second but lose it almost immediately. Everyone told me to cross my eyes as I was focusing on the picture, but I could never get my eyes to stay in a crossed position.

In college, I went to the eye doctor because I had been experiencing symptoms of eyestrain. One of the first things he did was have me focus on the point of his pen as he brought it slowly, in a straight line, towards my eyes. My eyes did not cross, and he asked me if I saw one pen or two. I saw two--turns out I have an eye teaming issue called Convergence Insufficiency. (I'm fortunate that the eyestrain symptoms never affected my schoolwork or reading. The eye doctor laughed when I told him that I was an English major and spent nearly all my time reading as a child.) So because my eyes don't converge properly, it's hard for me to see Magic Eye pictures.

Come to think of it, I think the little card the doctor gave me for exercises is a very basic stereogram. Each side has a small, medium, and large circle, all in a row. One side has red circles, the other has blue. The object is to put the index card near your nose and look down on each circle, trying to see only one instead of two. Then you put the card in front of you so that the edge is only touching your nose, and you're looking at both sides simultaneously. You're supposed to focus so that the red and blue circles are supposed to blend together. It's annoying and makes my eyes water, so I rarely do them and just wear my reading glasses.

The extinction timeline.

No! Don't take away my sit down breakfast! Or my free parking!